JV Basketball 5th and 6th graders

I have been reading your thoughts on this topic and great suggestions. Need to explain my issue. we have 14 boys on our team. (no cuts at this age) 5 have never even picked up a basketball. We have had a couple practices and the boys are improving, at the same time the older more experienced kids are getting frustrated with them. I have had discussions to address this. My problem is, I was told to play to win, not exactly what I wanted to hear, I prefer to play everyone somewhat equal playing time, and truthfully we won't win that way. I saw the suggestion on the A, B C team and subing players every 2-3 minutes, that hasn't worked, we lost, yet when I played our 6 best players, we won. Can you please help revise a strategy for my 14 players, so the parents won't hate me, and the kids aren't frustrated.

Coach -

Some one has the wrong idea as to working with kids of this age.... 5th and 6th grade basketball should be about developing skills and a love for the game. This win at all cost attitude for 10-11 year old kids is ridiculous..

Who is forcing you to coach to "WIN" with these kids? Why don't you suggest that they come to this site and talk to the (do I dare call us experts?) and find out what is really important here?

Here is something that I did with a 7th/8th grade team my last year of coaching at that level before I moved on the to the high school level.

The school told me that we would have one less practice a week... didn't like that either... but I made lemonade out of that... I scheduled practice/non - conference games... with schools that would go along with this..... I wanted an extra quarter of 8 minutes ( that level playedd 6 minute quarters ) where we would play our last 7 players so they would get some quality playing time. I got 12 extra games doing this and those kids played 12 mini games that they might not have gotten if they had not taken the practice away from us. We had to rent gyms to practice in so we were not exactly a power house in basketball.... but that year we won our division and played in the league championship game for the first time in the schools history. Everybody was happy.

Just an idea for you... I hope this helps.

Thanks so much for your suggestion. I kid you not, head of our sports department wants win-win-win.... If my son wasn't on the team, I would never have signed up for this. UGH!
I talked to my two assistant coaches and we are going to omit our Tues night practice and I am in the works of getting some of the other schools to have games with us. Of course we have to dish out the extra money for the refs, Of course these games don't go on record, but the kids don't know that. i think it's the best solution. I am still going to try and sub on the actual games with some of the other kids, like I did today, (this game didn't go on record, it was a jamboree from our Catholic School, we got cremed, but I walked away with a better feeling than yesterdays game where we won, but I played mainly the same guys.
So thanks again for the suggestions

The head of your sports department needs some help about working with youg kids and teaching them about the game... NOT WINNING.

Seriously.... tell him about this site and have him write a question regarding this subject... I think he will be very surprised at the answers he gets. He should lay brick for a living. haha

Kids of this age WANT TO PLAY... of course they want to win... everyone does... but PLAYING is why they signed up, hopefully someone will be teaching them the fundamentals of the game during the process.

Good luck and I'm glad that I could help in some small way.